Dancing to the Partisan Beat: A First Analysis of Political Communication on TikTok

Juan Carlos Medina Serrano, Orestis Papakyriakopoulos, Simon Hegelich

Research output: Chapter in Book/Report/Conference proceedingConference contributionpeer-review

110 Scopus citations

Abstract

TikTok is a video-sharing social networking service, whose popularity is increasing rapidly. It was the world's second-most downloaded app in 2019. Although the platform is known for having users posting videos of themselves dancing, lip-syncing, or showcasing other talents, user-videos expressing political views have seen a recent spurt. This study aims to perform a primary evaluation of political communication on TikTok. We collect a set of US partisan Republican and Democratic videos to investigate how users communicated with each other about political issues. With the help of computer vision, natural language processing, and statistical tools, we illustrate that political communication on TikTok is much more interactive in comparison to other social media platforms, with users combining multiple information channels to spread their messages. We show that political communication takes place in the form of communication trees since users generate branches of responses to existing content. In terms of user demographics, we find that users belonging to both the US parties are young and behave similarly on the platform. However, Republican users generated more political content and their videos received more responses; on the other hand, Democratic users engaged significantly more in cross-partisan discussions.

Original languageEnglish
Title of host publicationWebSci 2020 - Proceedings of the 12th ACM Conference on Web Science
PublisherAssociation for Computing Machinery, Inc
Pages157-166
Number of pages10
ISBN (Electronic)9781450379892
DOIs
StatePublished - 6 Jul 2020
Event12th ACM Conference on Web Science, WebSci 2020 - Southampton, United Kingdom
Duration: 6 Jul 202010 Jul 2020

Publication series

NameWebSci 2020 - Proceedings of the 12th ACM Conference on Web Science

Conference

Conference12th ACM Conference on Web Science, WebSci 2020
Country/TerritoryUnited Kingdom
CitySouthampton
Period6/07/2010/07/20

Keywords

  • TikTok
  • US politics
  • political communication
  • social media

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